New evidence for the Arkenstone-Silmaril case

[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by bin

First of all, I am shocked at how quickly you responded after this thread being dead for so long.

The Dead rise to fulfill their oaths.

I don't think there's any real in-canon support for the Arkenstone being a Silmaril. This is fairly clearly intended to not be the case. As much as it's impossible to prove a negative, Tolkien would clearly have mentioned this somewhere.

That said...

First, I think it's pretty clear from Rateliff's History of The Hobbit that Tolkien borrowed a lot of things wholesale from his mythology when writing The Hobbit and there is not much stretching involved to say that the Arkenstone is an ersatz Silmaril. When The Hobbit gets integrated into the mythos "for real" with the writing of The Lord of the Rings, these connections are either decanonised or rewritten or recast--Mirkwood cannot BE Taur-nu-Fuin, nor the Great River Sirion.

Secondly, although my opinion is that it is clear that "in the canon," (or the finished version... etc.) the Arkenstone cannot be a Silmaril, I don't think there's actually enough text on the matter to prove it definitively. All the fate of the Silmaril texts (i.e. anything in The Silmarillion after Túrin's death is reworked early material. The War of Wrath and the disposition of the Silmarils is from ca.1930 Qenta Noldorinwa and some later notes worked in. As far as my memory is concerned, the Appendices go into so little detail about the First Age that the Silmarils are barely mentioned, let alone their individual dispositions. So, if you want to make a case that the Christopher Tolkien-edited Silm is too flimsy to argue against the "Arkenstone is a Silmaril" theory... well, I have a thread for you.